BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) --
As NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia continued on Monday, relatives of those killed in
NATO's mistaken bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade arrived to claim the bodies of
their loved ones.

The sad mission took place as protests over the weekend bombing intensified in Beijing and elsewhere.

The Saturday strike killed three Chinese journalists and
injured at least 20 at the compound in Yugoslavia's
capital.

NATO officials said an intelligence gathering error led to bombing the wrong building.

At the embassy compound, the father of one victim, holding a bloodstained bed cover,
wept uncontrollably in the room where his daughter and son-
in-law died.

He was part of a delegation of leaders and others from China who visited the heavily damaged compound.

The delegation, led by the deputy foreign minister, has
been guaranteed safe passage by U.S. officials as they
prepare to take the dead and wounded back to China by
airplane.

Apologies and overtures from NATO and the United
States have done little to stem outrage over the bombing from
Chinese protesters in Belgrade, Beijing, Toronto and elsewhere.

In the Yugoslav capital, hundreds of Chinese demonstrators
were joined by Serbian sympathizers who denounced the NATO
attack and called for an end to the war.

And in China, protesters hurled gas bombs, rocks and insults
at diplomatic missions of the United States and other NATO
countries, as tens of thousands protested in Beijing and
provincial capitals throughout the country.

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea defended the record of NATO in the air campaign against
Yugoslavia. Since it began on March 24, the alliance has dropped about 9,000 missiles
and bombs and only 12 have "gone astray," he said.

"If you do a mathematical computation, you're talking about a
fraction of one percent. So we continue to be accurate," Shea
said.

"When one commits something once, twice, three times it can
still argue that it committed a mistake ... but when mistakes
committed many, many times ... then it is a style, it is a
policy," Jovanovic said on CNN's "Late Edition.

The attack was the result of "faulty information," U.S. Defense Secretary William
Cohen and CIA Director George Tenet said in a joint statement.

NATO believed the building housed a Yugoslav military facility, not the Chinese Embassy, officials said.

"Those involved in
targeting mistakenly believed that the Federal Directorate of
Supply and Procurement was at the location that was hit,"
the statement said.

U.S. President Bill Clinton sent a letter to Chinese President Jiang Zemin on
Sunday making clear the U.S. government's deep regret over the attack.

The CIA made the initial target suggestion that led to the bombing of the embassy, a U.S. official told CNN
on Sunday. Maps of the area showed the Chinese Embassy in a former location; it moved four years ago.

China joined a chorus of voices from Russia and Yugoslavia
calling for an end to the bombing. But officials from NATO
repeated their assertion that the air campaign would continue
until the safe return of Kosovo refugees can be assured.

"The air campaign is going to continue," NATO Secretary-
General Javier Solana said. "The Yugoslav government hasn't
done anything positive."

NATO has recently been averaging about 500 overnight sorties, an alliance military spokesman said.

The Press Secretary to Russian President Boris Yeltsin
confirmed to CNN that Russia's special envoy on the Balkans, Viktor Chernomyrdin, is leaving for Beijing Monday.

The trip follows a Monday morning telephone
conversation between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry the two presidents discussed what the Kremlin referred to as the "further
aggravation" of the situation in Yugoslavia caused by the "barbaric bombing" of the Chinese embassy. The telephone
call was initiated by Yeltsin.

Chernomyrdin's visit will continue consultations begun last week in Beijing by Deputy Head of the Presidential
Administration, Sergei Prikhodko. Sources said the Russian envoy will discuss the situation in Yugoslavia.

Russia believes that it needs to cooperate more closely with China.

Chernomyrdin has been making the rounds in Europe in search of a peaceful resolution to the Kosovo crisis.

"Bombing won't resolve anything," Chernomyrdin said in Germany. "It has to be a political resolution."

Chernomyrdin returned to Moscow on Sunday with "new factors"
to discuss with Yeltsin, after speaking with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic by phone.

"I can say there are some encouraging results from the
conversations with Milosevic, but I will not say anything
yet," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Chernomyrdin as
saying.

NATO said Sunday that Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were
providing some protection for displaced persons inside
Kosovo, as thousands of refugees continued to flee the
province.

In Kukes, Albania, refugees on foot and tractors streamed
across the border. Mostly women, children and the elderly,
they brought more tales of atrocities, and said Serbian
forces had abducted many of their men.

One KLA fighter stood at the
border, offering encouragement and advice to the refugees.

Unexpectedly, he found some members of his own family huddled on one of
the tractors. He called for his daughter Beta, and embraced
his mother, Rabisha, soothing her as she cried and talked of
her dead sons, and those she had seen killed before her eyes.